


love is a many splendor thing

by Babydoll Ria (Babydoll_Ria)



Series: Ficmas 2014 [9]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 08:51:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3441020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Babydoll_Ria/pseuds/Babydoll%20Ria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's only been engaged for an hour before he calls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love is a many splendor thing

**Author's Note:**

> For: [](http://goodnightclaraxoxo.tumblr.com>%20Goodnightclaraxoxo</a>%20said%20Anything%20angsty%20from%20you!)

The press release had been out for three hours, saying indie actress Annie Cresta was engaged to celebrity chef Peeta Mellark.

All in all, the response was good-there were of course several angry tweets and hate petitions trying to get them to break up so Peeta and singer Katniss Everdeen, his on again off again girlfriend for the better of three years could be on again.

She liked reading those comments, most of them were from the twelve to fourteen range, and when you take away the spelling mistakes, it was almost impressive how creative they were.

Peeta was off consoling or confirming (she didn’t know which) to his mother that this engagement was real, and that left Annie alone in the kitchen flipping through a magazine on the granite counter tops while snacking on a white chip macadamia nut cookie-her favourite.

It was only three hours into her engagement when it happened.

 _Well, fuck_ , Annie Cresta, age twenty-six and very much newly engaged, thought when her phone began to flash more like a slap in the face with Effie’s many rings than a text message scrolling around her home screen with the name _F.Odair._

She ignores it.

There are many other things she has to do than to deal with Finnick Odair-especially since it has been over two years since she saw him last.

She leaves her phone in a drawer of odds and ends in the kitchen island and leaves the kitchen to wrap herself around her fiancé who is still on the phone with his mother.

 _That’s not a particularly good sign;_ she thinks absently listening in to the conversation. Apparently his mother is of the impression that all she wants from Peeta is the bakery he stands to inherit. It’s laughable, she has a net worth of two point three billion, and while she isn’t highly connected to any of the studios, she starred in one of the most successful movie franchise of all time while she was a teenager, and one Oscar.

She doesn’t want the bakery.

( What would she do with a bakery anyway? She burns toast on a regular basis-she’s never had to cook for herself really. She started acting at age four, and hit the big time at age sixteen. )

She rolls her eyes when Peeta finally hangs up, and buries his head in her neck.

‘She likes you’ he says tiredly, Annie smiles, and pets his head softly. ‘She does.’

(It’s not true-well it sort is. His mother likes Annie the second most, which is a lot better than poor Katniss Everdeen).

* * *

 

The next week ‘s _People_ has a full out ten page article chronicling both Peeta and Annie’ past relationship.  For a chef, it’s surprising how many people Peeta is being linked to; there’s Delly his next door neighbour from childhood, now a shoe designer and in the LGBTA movement, Madge Undersee the senator of South Dakota’s daughter whom he met in college, and finally Katniss Everdeen.

Katniss and Peeta’s relationship spans five whole pages, from when they met at sixteen to the first rushed engagement at eighteen that ended in flames-literally someone set her dress on fire-to the reconciliation when they were twenty, and then their rocky relationship over the three years until it ended.

There’s a lot of glossy photos and quotes from “friends” of the former couple, saying how Everlark-the moniker the press dubbed them, which Annie found sorely lacked to the proposed ‘Peeniss’- was one of those couples that could always rally.

Annie’s part of the article was small, a blurb about her first boyfriend Reid who had died when he was sixteen in a boating accident-it still makes her heart ache when she thinks of Reid, it was an innocent first love, where every touch gave her butterflies-that was her only confirmed relationship before Peeta; she’s always preferred keeping work and private life separate.

But there was a three page spread tracking the possibility of a relationship between Finnick Odair, Hollywood big shot actor with several Oscar nominations and two to his name, and her.  They had no photos, no substantial evidence, and just vague coincidences such as he wore a grey sweatshirt, and a few months later she wore one too.

They were child actors on the circuit, both of them not in the Disney or Nickelodeon child actor mold but in serious cable dramas. He played a psychopath in a show about serial killers; she played the daughter of a prostitute. They had met and posed for pictures at awards shows, often as the youngest people there dressed up like miniature adults; but they didn’t work together until Panem was aired.

Finnick played the lead character in the six film series about a bunch of teenagers trying to cause a revolution against the government that took away emotions and hid soul mate.  Annie played the daughter of the president, who hid the pretty handwriting tattoo of her one true love under a lace cuff. 

They didn’t meet until the third film, but when they did, it was dynamic and sublime. At seventeen and nineteen they danced around the screen, trying to figure how could the perfect person for you go against everything you believe in?

They were co-workers at the very beginning, colleagues at the very end.

And that was all of Finnick and Annie.

* * *

 

She could only ignore her phone for a day before she needed it for work purposes-Gloss, one of her favourite directors wants her to read for the female lead in his newest film.

When she retrieves her phone from the island drawer, there are ninety-seven text messages, twelve missed calls and one hundred and three emails.

She doesn’t really know what to say to that, so she brews herself a cup of coffee and begins to scroll down the messages, typing out quick thank yous, before she gets to the end of the text messages and all that’s left is Finnick’s.

 **`[SMS from F. Odair]`** you say yes to him instead of me

She lied.

They were co-workers at the very beginning, madly in love in the middle, and colleagues at the very end.

But it’s hardly a talking point; it was just eight years of her life there is much more to her than Finnick Odair and that roller coaster derailing itself messily.

 **`[SMS from A. Cresta]`** Yes.

The response is immediate, it’s a phone call and she wants to press ignore like she’s been doing for the past two years while Finnick sleeps with all the women of Hollywood, and calling her after asking her why they can’t make it work and to give him a real reason, one better than their careers would suffer. She stopped answering after a year; she doesn’t have any other reason.

 _‘You love him more than me?’_ His voice is deep, husky and it makes her shiver. She’s an actress but lying to Finnick is impossible, and silence is so telling.

‘It’s different.’

_‘How?’_

Peeta is safe, predictable, a tad bit boring, but she doesn’t read tabloids and see he’s in Paris because of his film schedule and there’s no pictures of him in clubs with girls falling off his arms.  Peeta doesn’t make her heart palpitated like she’s dying.

‘It just is.’ She tells him, and she can hear him laugh, dark and knowing that makes her stomach curl. ‘It’s been two years Finnick-it’s really pathetic you’re still in love with me.’

 _‘Annie, one day you’ll see we’re inevitable.’_ He hangs up, and she is left holding the phone so tightly that she has to calm down to pry her fingers off it.

* * *

 

‘You know it’s only going to get worst.’  Johanna tells her with her martini in hand at the booth they’ve gotten, ‘Finn-fuck everyone always figured this was temporary. That you’d break up with baker boy and get back with him.’

‘He asked me to marry him.’

‘Y’know I think he only did it because he’s believing the rumours that Katniss Everdeen is knocked up-yeah Katniss Everdeen,’ Johanna emphasizes, ‘The idiot girl who couldn’t figure out how to put on a condom on a banana on SNL.’

‘Finnick asked me two years ago,’ Annie spoke in low tones, her eyes playing with the straw left in her tumbler. ‘He had a ring-his grandmother’s, and we were on his parent’s boat, and it was really, really pretty.’

If Annie looked up there was a frozen expression on Johanna’s face a cornucopia of emotions; Annie Cresta was not Johanna’s Mason’s best friend. In fact it would be easier and more correct to call them enemies.  Johanna Mason was Finnick’s most regular cohort.

You couldn’t use the word girlfriend or lover or partner for Johanna, they were claimed by Annie, used only for her.

‘Why did you say no?’

‘I didn’t. I didn’t say yes.’ Annie said, ‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I jumped off the boat and swam to shore.’

‘That’s a really big no.’

‘I was twenty four,’ Annie shrugged, ‘If I said yes, I just agreed to spend the rest of my life as the wife of Finnick Odair, not the awarding winning actress. I would always be _his_ wife, not my own person.’

‘Then why didn’t you say no?’

‘Because I love him.’

‘What the fuck are you saying?’

‘It’s…complicated but really it’s not.’

‘It sounds fucking complicated.’ Johanna snorted.

‘Well…I love him. I am always going to love him, I’ll probably always be in love with him but I’m not going to spend the rest of my life as Annie Odair. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life going from location shoot to location shoot. I like stability. I like staying in one place. Hell I love television because of that. I don’t want to buy a house and never live there, and that’s what Finnick likes. He likes the travel, the adventure.’

Johanna began to speak but Annie sat back, and said quietly ‘You can love someone with every inch of yourself, know you would die for them but not be compatible together.’

‘Is that really love then?’

* * *

 

She didn’t see the interview, so she doesn’t know anything until she logs onto twitter, and the hashtag _FinnOdairBeware_ is trending.

It’s mildly disconcerting so she googles it and finds a three minute interview with Caesar Flickerman on YouTube.

> _‘It’s being a busy couple of months right Finn?’_
> 
> _‘I guess. It’s just going to get more interesting though.’_
> 
> _‘And why is that?’_
> 
> _‘I’ve been waiting for a long time for someone to wake up and figure it out, and I’m tired of waiting.’_
> 
> _‘That sounds a bit ominous.’_
> 
> _‘More like inevitable.’_
> 
> _‘Well then, beware of Finn Odair.’_

There’s something like a chill that goes through her spine, at the end of the clip when Finnick is looking at the camera, all trace of the easy going pretty boy actor melted away, like an ice lolly in a Texan summer. Finnick has always been good looking, painfully handsome, but in that moment he’s devastating, cold, cruel and beautiful, cut from ice his eyes give Annie a promise, he won’t let her get married.

It’s not as romantic as it seems.

 

* * *

 

Peeta comes home smelling of everclear and pine cones and there’s a sad look on his face.

‘I saw Katniss,’ he tells her, his tone guilty as he sits down opposite her in their living room. ‘I know the release got out but I wanted to tell…’ he trails off, eyes trained on the gold band with a pretty diamond set in the center surrounded by smaller emeralds-they reminded him of her eyes. Peeta clears his throat, ‘I owe her that much.’

‘Yeah,’ she nods. It seems like someone pricked Peeta and he deflates like a balloon, his shoulders slump, and she wonders if he was expecting a fight. She and Peeta don’t fight; they’re calm and agreeable with quiet discussion.

Why should they change now?

Besides Katniss is his Finnick; the unfished business the lover he won’t stop loving but won’t be with for reasons she’s never asked. Katniss is complicated to Peeta, and that’s all she knows.

( Katniss is really simple in actuality, but pointing it out to Peeta is a waste of time, he’s too close to her to see that she pushes him away to see if he’ll chase after her because everyone she loves leaves and she needs reassurance but she won’t ask for it. )

‘I love you,’ Peeta says and it’s a good thing he isn’t an actor. He does love her, just as there is some part of her that loves him but it’s not enough, it’s a drizzle compared to the torrential downpour that Finnick is drowning her, smothering her from anyone else and any sort of happiness.

She doesn’t say anything, because there is nothing to say.

It’s just not enough.


End file.
